“Easter is a pagan holiday taken over by Christians.” Or so one line of popular thought goes. Perhaps you have encountered someone touting the “pagan origins of Easter” and accusing Christians of simply baptizing a non-Christian celebration. The implication, often, is that the resurrection itself arose from pagan soil (and therefore didn’t really happen).
Given the fact that the atoning death and resurrection of our Lord is utterly central to the Christian faith, this is a serious claim. If Christ did not die and was not raised from the dead, then the entire architecture of Christianity crumbles to the ground. So, is there any merit to the argument that Easter has pagan roots?
Eostre and Easter
Much of the confusion springs from the origin of the English word “Easter” — the term we use for the season in which our Lord died and rose from the dead. The source of this term is quite obscure. The earliest explanation for its origin is given by the Northumbrian Bible commentator and historian Bede (c. 675–735). In his book The Reckoning of Time, Bede states that the term was derived from a goddess named Eostre, whose annual festival was celebrated in the springtime by the pre-Christian Anglo-Saxons. Corroborative evidence for the existence of such a deity, however, is negligible, leading some to suggest that Bede may have invented this goddess.
In addition, the association of eggs and rabbits is often put forward as evidence that Easter is connected with fertility rituals. As Richard Sermon explains, however, both fail to hold weight. Of eggs, he says,
Spring eggs heralded the beginning of new life after the cold winter months, and so also symbolized the resurrection of Jesus. By the Middle Ages, it was customary throughout Europe to give decorated eggs on Easter Sunday, when they could finally be eaten after the long Lenten fast. . . . In England these colored Easter eggs were also referred to as “Pace” or “Paste” eggs, a name which is . . . derived from the Latin Pascha. (“From Easter to Ostara,” 340)
He also notes that Easter rabbits are traceable to German customs, with 1678 as the earliest association of rabbits/hares with Easter (341).
What becomes clear in the historical record is that the original Christian celebration of Easter had absolutely nothing to do with an obscure Teutonic goddess or a pagan fertility festival. Its roots are quite clearly Jewish, and its soil is the divinely mandated Passover of the old covenant.
Passover Roots
All four of the Gospels tie the death of our Lord Jesus to the Jewish festival of the Passover (Matthew 26:17–19; Mark 14:12–16; Luke 22:7–13; John 13:1). This temporal tie is reflected in the way a good number of European languages use some variant of Pascha to refer to the Easter season — for instance, Pascha (Greek), Pascha (Latin), Pascua (Spanish), Pâques (French), and Pasqua (Italian), among others. So, from the very beginning, the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection was intimately linked to the Jewish feast of the Passover, a fact that led the apostle Paul to describe Christ as “our Passover lamb” (1 Corinthians 5:7). If English-speaking Christianity had retained a variant of the original wording for this festival — namely, Pascha — the charge of pagan roots would probably have never been aired.
Beyond this linguistic evidence, clear evidence of the Jewish roots of Easter can be found in what is known as the Quartodeciman (“fourteenth day”) controversy at the close of the second century, which Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 265–339), the so-called father of church history, called “a controversy of great significance” (Church History 5.23).
The churches in Asia Minor (modern Turkey) and Syria observed the remembrance of Christ’s death on the actual date of the Jewish Passover, 14 Nisan, without regard for what day of the week on which it fell. The house churches in Rome led by Victor I (d. 199) — who is probably the first man who can be called the bishop of Rome, as prior to this time, the churches were led by a presbyterate — were critical of the timing of the Asian and Syrian congregations’ paschal celebrations. Victor insisted that Easter must be celebrated on a Sunday.
Given the multicultural nature of Rome, it is quite likely that Christian visitors from Asia Minor and Syria in the Roman capital were causing confusion for some by celebrating Easter on 14 Nisan. It is thus conceivable that the Asian and Syrian believers were rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ while the Roman churches had not yet even observed Good Friday.
In a gesture that presaged the future modus operandi of the bishop of Rome, Victor I insisted that the churches in Asia Minor and Syria had to conform to the Roman practice (which was also that of the churches in Egypt). If they failed to do so, he threatened them with “total excommunication” (Church History 5.24). Represented by Polycrates (fl. 180–200), the bishop of Ephesus, the churches of the East replied to Victor, informing him that their tradition of the timing of Easter had the sanction of none other than the apostle John, from whom they had learned it. Only the timely intervention of Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130–c. 200) averted a schism. He wrote to Victor, urging him to take an irenic posture toward those who differed from him in the East.
Polycrates had insisted that the Asian celebration of Easter on 14 Nisan went all the way back to the apostle John. And he personally had known no other date for Easter since the mid-120s, which was but a generation after John’s death. This controversy shows that the second-century churches in Asia Minor clearly connected Easter to the Jewish Passover, making later pagan roots for this holiday impossible.
Pascha of Our Salvation
One final piece of evidence of the Jewish roots of our Easter celebrations comes from a remarkable sermon by Melito of Sardis (c. 100–c. 180), whom Polycrates, in his letter to Victor I, described as having exercised his ministry “entirely in the Holy Spirit” (Church History 5.24). Entitled On the Pascha, it is one of the oldest sermons that we possess. Melito explicitly identifies Christ as the paschal lamb who was prefigured in the Passover offering. As he bore witness:
Concerning the mystery of the Pascha, who is Christ . . .
He is the one led like a lamb
And slaughtered like a sheep;
He ransomed us from the worship of the world
As from the land of Egypt,
And he set us free from the slavery of the devil
As from the hand of Pharaoh. . . .
This is the Pascha of our salvation. (On the Pascha 65, 67, 69)
Central to the meaning of Easter is this Pauline understanding of Christ as our Passover. Whatever controversies may swirl around the particular day on which the death of our Lord is recalled, they pale in comparison to the importance of this fundamental pillar of biblical Christianity.
When the early church began celebrating Easter, then, they were not taking their inspiration from pagan holidays. They celebrated Easter because Jesus fulfilled the ancient hope of Israel’s Passover — and because he, unlike the lamb, did not stay slain.
